Telling Stories

Perspectives on Longitudinal Writing Research

Jenn Fishman, Amy C. Kimme Hea, Jenn Fishman, Amy C. Kimme Hea

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781646424320, 9781646424313
• eBook ISBN: 9781646424337
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Higher Education
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In Telling Stories, more than a dozen longitudinal writing researchers look beyond conventional project findings to story their work and, in doing so, offer otherwise unavailable glimpses into the logics and logistics of long-range studies of writing. The result is a volume that centers interrelations among people, places, and politics across two decades of praxis and an array of educational sites: two-year colleges, a senior military college, an adult literacy center, a small liberal arts college, and both public and private four-year universities.

Contributors share direct knowledge of longitudinal writing research, citing project data (e.g., interview transcripts, research notes, and journals), descriptions drawn from memory, and extended personal reflections. The resulting stories, tempered by the research and scholarship of others, convey a sense of longitudinal research as a lived activity as well as a prominent and consequential approach to inquiry. Yet Telling Stories is not a how-to guide, nor is it written for longitudinal researchers alone. Instead, this volume addresses issues about writing research that are germane to all who conduct or count on it. Such topics include building and sustaining good interpersonal research relations, ethically negotiating the institutional power dynamics that undergird writing research, effectively using knowledge from longitudinal studies to advocate for writers and writing educators, and improving both conceptual and concrete resources for long-range research in writing studies.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Storying Longitudinal Research: Relationality and Self-Reflexivity
• 2. Weaving Reflexivity, Relationality, and Time in a Decade-Long Study of Writing Development and Learning Transfer
• 3. Following Participants as Leaders in Long Research
• 4. Mission-Driven Longitudinal Research: The Public Value of Telling the Stories of Two-Year College Writers
• 5. Understanding Imbricated Contexts: Institutional Formation and Longitudinal Writing Research
• 6. Researching for Capital: Longitudinal Research, Precarity, and Institutional Citizenship
• 7. More Simple Gifts: Labor, Relationships, and Ethics in Longitudinal Research
• 8. The Precarious Method: Longitudinal Research and Material Uncertainty in Professional and Technical Writing Studies
• 9. Radically Longitudinal, Radically Contextual: Growing Lifespan Writing Research
• 10. Becoming History
• Epilogue: Why We Tell Stories
• Index
• About the Authors